garage door jumping?

yet another question (sorry!). this house has a large attached garage with
a 10 foot wide, 7.5 foot high sectional insulated Garaga door installed in
2000. Metal tracking, and wearing metal rollers.
Recently had a nice Craftsman 1/2 horse operator professionally installed.
at the time (last fall) he told me the door was perfectly balanced and
aligned, and could not get any better (thats a good thing).
I've noticed now in the cold spell we've had the door has "bound up" a few
times and caused the operator to reverse. since the real cold has gone and
we're in the -15c stuff, the door seems to open smoothly, but closing from
full-open it sometimes "hops" and "surges" down.
what causes this and whats the fix? the only thing I should really replace
are the rollers, and will upgrade to ball bearing, rubber edged rollers in
the spring. also, is an operator isolator kit worth the money? since its
attached, the operator radiates some noise to the rooms above...
thks for the advice.
b

Disconnect the opener from the door. How does it work now? Are the
spring(s) still on one piece? There are lots of possible problems. You
need to do a little detective work to find them, that starts by
disconnecting the drive.
Without the drive the door should move smoothly up and down without
needing a lot of assistance either way and should stay in both the up and
down positions without help.

Disconnect the opener and see how it works. If it is heavy or rough,
call a pro. Garage doors are very dangerous to work on if you don't
know what you are doing. You won't believe how heavy they are if you
do something wrong and they come crashing down.
Watch out for the crooks with the large Yellow Pages ads that have a
low come on price and then tell you you need $600 of repairs. In my
area, Wayne Dalton repairs any brand doors for a reasonable price and
sells top of the line doors if you want to replace it. If they are on
your area, consider calling them for a repair.

It's not the opener, it is the door stationary pulleys. But wait.. it
gets better. surging means their still in phase, when thy get out of
phase and the "camming" gets worse it can shake things to pieces. just
vise the door open, release cable and replace pulleys. The acid test
is to spray wd40 in the center of pulley and see if it goes away -
this will also buy you time.
Frank
http://home.comcast.net/~froarty572/openfaq.htm

Could also be caused by improper header mount above door. I always
lagbolt 2x4 so the wallboard doesn't crush and allow push pull
motion(creep)- your statement about door sometimes reversing makes me
wonder if the installation hasn't crept since initial set up.
As far as isolation kits - they aren't much good -Ive done as well
with hose gaskets betwee unit and verticals. also thin cardboard
between case and housing on either side of vert mounts does wonders to
stop amplification.
I'm sorry you already invested. I've recently installed some lift -
master 2280's with something new called MVIS motor vibration isolation
- they also are belt drive. If the doors were not moving I would have
sworn they were broke. This was on a double garage with 80 inch
vertical drops! I really don't want to install anything else anymore
but they are kind of pricey and I apparently just missed the promo.

Sounds like the opener is installed too high above the door. When the
door is fully opened the operator rail should be within 2" of the top
of the door. When the opener is installed to high the opener carriage
will actually try to overtake the door and will cause the door to "hop
& surge" instead of forcing the door to close smoothly. If this is the
problem & if the opener is left that way eventually it will buckle the
heck out of the top section & maybe the whole door.
Doordoc
www.DoorsAndOpeners.com

I played with it some more today to verify. on upward movement the door is
perfectly smooth all the way up.
from the fully up position and it being still, lowering the door is just
about perfectly smooth too, with a little bit of
"bump" on startup. when it surges is when I stop it halfway, and then power
it up or down again...the first part
of the movement is jerky. releasing the operator, I can operate the door
quite smoothly up and down, and it
will hold itself in position at most heights.
I'm attributing the mid-drop reversing to substantially cold weather we had.
Only happened 2 or 3 times total...
NOTHING behaves quite right in the brutal cold snap we had...easy -40c for
weeks. sometimes into -50c with
the wind! I was warned by the installer NOT to monkey with the downforce in
the cold....I wasn't sure what he
meant, but now I am...apparently this is common in this area? brutal cold
causes things to shrink and shift,
causing things to not be quite in alignment.
the door tech is a seasoned professional and very good at what he does. he
confirmed in the fall that the door
could not be more balanced or smooth and I should be happy...guess I'm just
over reacting to something I've had
no experience with....
b

It would help a ton if you replaced the cheap rollers you got with
your door with the quality rollers you can buy even on ebay. These
have the white plastic rollers and they reduce friction and noise by
50 percent.

actually, I've already ordered them! :) They are full ball bearing, nylon
edged rollers. Got em for roughly $3.50 each cdn, which I didn't think was
too bad....
in the spring I'll have them changed....the bottom one is impossible to get
out without unlooping the cable, which is something I'm not familiar with.
b
garage

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